PNB Chapter 114 : Chapter 114
Chapter 114 : Chapter 114
Chapter 114: Like Putting on Airs? Then Stay There and Keep Posing
The moment Li Mu left, the private room fell silent as a tomb.
Zhao Hong froze where she sat, her face shifting rapidly between green and white. She had never experienced anything like this before. She had only meant to give Li Mu a show of force, but she had never expected him to simply turn around and walk out.
Naturally, Li Mu had no intention of indulging her.
Before coming, he had already more or less guessed that the person asking to see him was Zhao Yi’s aunt, here to plead for leniency. Li Mu had originally planned to use the meeting to get a clearer picture of their family connections. That was all. Who would have thought that Zhao Yi’s aunt was the sort who wanted to play both sides—begging for help while still insisting on preserving her lofty image?
If she wanted to put on airs, then let her keep putting them on.
As for leaving Yin Changming to roast over the fire, that was hardly a problem. Would an old man like him be afraid of a little roasting? What could a few women possibly do to him?
Yin Changming was dumbstruck as well. He had just pulled out the chair, but now he could not sit down at all. Stammering awkwardly, he said, “Ah... well... this...”
Zhao Hong flew into a rage from humiliation.
“What do you mean, ‘this’? Go bring him back right now!”
By then, Yin Changming had also come to his senses.
Why the hell were you yelling at me?
You were obviously the one who summoned Li Mu here because you needed something from him. But the moment he arrived, you tried to throw your weight around. Now that he had left, you wanted me to go call him back?
At that thought, Yin Changming decided to go all in.
He had been afraid before meeting this Deputy Minister’s wife.
But now Li Mu had openly slapped her in the face and left, which meant Li Mu had no need of her at all.
So why should he be afraid of her anymore?
He was not afraid of being targeted either. After all, Blackwater High School was standing on Li Mu’s support now, not on his, Yin Changming’s!
So Yin Changming began to hedge as well. “Well... he really did just get a phone call. The Deputy Commander-in-Chief from the military district needed him for something. The fact that he even came here first was already because he made time for it. I truly cannot call him back. Why don’t you call the commander yourself?”
The other ladies around the table nearly failed to hold back their laughter.
Yin Changming’s words really stabbed where it hurt.
No matter how important you were as a Deputy Minister’s wife, could you possibly outrank a Deputy Commander-in-Chief from the military district?
If you were really that capable, then stop throwing your weight around in front of some shabby principal like me. Go call the commander directly.
Zhao Hong was so angry that she began panting heavily.
“Principal Yin! Is this the kind of student your school has produced? Is this his quality? I called him here because I had something to discuss with him, and he just walked out like that?”
Yin Changming immediately clapped his hands. “Oh, so you were looking for him? I thought that since you told me to sit the moment I came in, you were looking for me. I suppose that was my fault for not making things clear. Our Li Mu only responds to softness, not force. If you needed something from him, then why didn’t you let him sit down when he came in? Ah, what a mess this has become... My apologies, ladies. I will take my leave first!”
Putting on a show of helpless distress, stomping his foot, shaking his head, and sucking at his teeth in vexation, Yin Changming said his farewells and walked straight out.
Since they were here to ask Li Mu for help, and Li Mu had already left, and since he had no intention of calling Li Mu back, what was the point of staying here any longer?
Zhao Hong was humiliated and furious beyond measure. She wished she could grind her teeth to pieces.
Meanwhile, the wife of the Law Enforcement Department Director sat there with her arms folded and a smile curled at her lips.
There was only one word for how she felt.
Satisfied!
Everything Yin Changming had just said perfectly echoed what she had said earlier.
It all pointed straight at one thing—Zhao Hong wanted to have it both ways.
She had called someone over because she needed something from him, yet she still insisted on trying to cow him the moment he arrived.
Damn that bitch. I had kindly advised you to speak properly to Li Mu, to give him a little face, to at least show the attitude of someone asking for help.
And you just kept snorting and preening. Who exactly were you putting on that act for?
Now you have made a fool of yourself, have you not?
Serves you right!
The moment Li Mu left Cloudwater Restaurant, he immediately called Lu Chenfeng.
“Hello? Iron Ox, tell your old man to press Zhao Yi hard and thoroughly dig into his connections with Deputy Minister of Resources Ling Haidong. See whether anything else is tied up in this.”
The head of the East District Law Enforcement Department was Lu Chenfeng’s father, Lu Zhenshan.
“Got it!”
Lu Chenfeng hung up as soon as he answered.
Li Mu then immediately dialed Zhang Zhiwei’s number.
“It’s me.”
“What is it?”
“I remember that when we were drinking before, you said your father was on fairly decent terms with the other Deputy Minister in the Department of Resources.”
Li Mu remembered that the Department of Resources had two Deputy Ministers.
One was Ling Haidong. The other was the one who had backed Li Mu during the Abyss First Battle and brought down Soaring Dragon Martial Academy.
“Before, it was my father currying favor with him,” Zhang Zhiwei said bluntly.
Li Mu understood the unspoken meaning. That might have been true before, but now that the Zhang Group had become a Military-Industrial Enterprise, who was currying favor with whom was no longer so certain.
“Just now, Ling Haidong’s wife—Zhao Yi’s aunt—came looking for me. She wanted me to let her nephew off the hook. I refused. All you need to do is pass this along to that Deputy Minister. He should know how to seize the opportunity.”
Zhang Zhiwei was silent for a moment.
Then a light laugh came from the other end. “Thanks.”
He hung up as well.
“Ah...”
Li Mu lowered the phone and stretched lazily.
Today, he really ought to thank Madam Ling.
If Zhao Yi really dragged the Ling Family into this, then Lu Zhenshan would earn a major meritorious service, and the other Deputy Minister of Resources would end up owing Zhang Zhiwei an enormous favor as well.
After making those calls, Li Mu no longer cared to involve himself in the matter. He headed straight for the Abyss.
Today was the day merits and rewards were being assessed. He ought to receive quite a substantial settlement of Merit Points.
And sure enough, Li Mu’s contribution in this battle was far from small.
He was awarded a First-Class Merit Medal and 800 Merit Points.
Eight hundred Merit Points might not have sounded like much compared to the amounts Li Mu had earned before.
But that was only because every meritorious service Li Mu had performed so far had been greater than the last.
That was why even figures in the hundreds or thousands did not seem especially high for him.
For ordinary people, though, Merit Points were usually earned in units of ten!
A mission worth thirty or fifty Merit Points was already considered extremely difficult.
To put it another way:
In this battle, Wang Longcheng had slain two Profound Rank Third Grade monsters. In the end, he had even fallen gravely wounded and unconscious while protecting Commander-in-Chief Liang Huajun.
He had nearly lost his life.
For that, he received 1,000 Merit Points and a Second-Class Merit Medal.
Commander-in-Chief Liang Huajun himself only received 900 points, without even a medal...
As for the reserves, everyone received between 20 and 100 points.
Every person’s Technological Watch had kill-count records, so unless someone had made some special contribution, merit was awarded according to monster kills.
Lu Chenfeng and Zhang Zhiwei each received 200 Merit Points and a Third-Class Merit Medal.
That was mainly because Li Mu, Zhang Zhiwei, and Lu Chenfeng had all performed far too brilliantly.
Li Mu especially.
Although he had not killed the most enemies in this battle—in fact, he had killed fewer than Zhang Zhiwei—his utility had been absolutely maxed out.
One Safe-Haven Method after another had steadily stabilized the retreating collapse of the Linked-Star Grand Array.
If not for Li Mu, the Linked-Star Grand Array would certainly have been broken.
At that point, every Abyss-Suppressing Army soldier would have been forced to fall back into the military district itself, and fight a bloody, brutal urban battle.
If it had come to street fighting, they probably still would have won in the end, but the casualties likely would have doubled again.
As for Zhang Zhiwei and Lu Chenfeng, their formidable personal combat strength had allowed them to take the lead and charge into battle at the front.
That had greatly boosted the reserves’ morale, allowing them to function as a highly mobile force, racing everywhere the battlefield needed support.
As the saying went, a weak soldier fails alone, but a weak general dooms the whole army.
If an ordinary person had been leading a group of green recruits, it would have been very difficult to achieve that kind of effect.
That was the role of a commander.
By now, Li Mu’s Merit Points had already risen to 2,500.
He had been promoted to Junior Tiger Marquis.
By rank alone, he should theoretically have already qualified to hold a high-level command post.
Unfortunately, his cultivation and seniority were both still too low, so he could not yet be assigned such an important military office.
Still, Wang Longcheng had said it himself— Li Mu could skip over the issue of seniority.
He had the knowledge base expected of a reserve officer, and in several key missions, his battlefield record had been more than impressive.
That résumé was solid enough already.
But his cultivation level absolutely had to improve.
Even if Li Mu himself did not care about the problem of being unable to command public respect and strongly demanded an appointment, he would still need to reach at least the Sixth or Seventh Grade before they would even consider assigning him a post.
Li Mu was not in a hurry.
He had intended from the start to raise his strength as quickly as possible.
As far as cultivation went, he only needed to wait another ten days or so. Once this batch of Qi-Gathering Pills and Earthvein Spirit Blossom Pills was finished, he would probably advance at least one grade at a minimum.
As for killing monsters, he could do that right now!
In any case, his demand for Triumph Points was only getting greater and greater.
Li Mu arrived at the main hall of Pearl Military District Base One and accepted a solo Blind-Zone Exploration mission.
In truth, accepting a mission was really just a matter of registering and leaving a record.
Every soldier had to register whatever mission he undertook, otherwise if he died out there, no one would even know.
After registering for the mission, Li Mu stepped outside, summoned Yaogu, and prepared to mount up and head for the Teleportation Area.
Unexpectedly, someone called out from behind him.
Li Mu turned his head and found that it was actually Qin Zhanye. Smiling, Li Mu cupped his fist and said, “Congratulations, Instructor Qin. I suppose I should be calling you Deputy Commanding Officer Qin now, right?”
Qin Zhanye had also made a considerable contribution in this battle and had likewise been promoted to Junior Tiger Marquis.
After Wang Longcheng was promoted to Deputy Commander-in-Chief, the position of Deputy Commanding Officer had become vacant, and Qin Zhanye had been elevated to fill it.
Qin Zhanye hurriedly raised a hand to stop him, though there was still a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Shh! Do not shout it around. Keep it low-key!”
“What is there to be embarrassed about?”
“Then let me congratulate you as well,” Qin Zhanye said with a laugh as he patted Li Mu on the arm. “The youngest Junior Tiger Marquis in the history of Pearl Military District, and the fastest to rise too.”
Li Mu could only beg for mercy in exasperation. Being praised to his face really was a little embarrassing.
“What are you off to do?” Qin Zhanye asked.
“Picked up a mission. Going out to stretch a bit,” Li Mu said casually.
“As expected, the stronger a person is, the harder he works,” Qin Zhanye praised. Then he looked at Yaogu beside Li Mu.
Ever since he had noticed Yaogu just now, he had felt that something about the horse was off. It had been snorting and whinnying restlessly the whole time, stamping and kicking its four hooves in agitation.
“Whoa, why is Yaogu so lively?” Qin Zhanye asked.
Li Mu spread his hands. “How should I know? Ever since it started following me, this thing has grown more and more energetic. It also drinks a huge amount of water and pisses like crazy. It runs around all day like it has some kind of hyperactivity.”
As he spoke, both men naturally turned to look at Yaogu.
Only to see that Yaogu had spotted a pile of horse manure on the ground—left behind by some other horse and not yet cleaned away by the sanitation crew.
Without a second thought, Yaogu lowered its head and began devouring it.
“Hey! Do not eat that!”
Li Mu shouted and kicked the horse squarely on the rump.
But Yaogu only chewed even more enthusiastically, tossing clumps of dung into its mouth as it ate.
The moment Qin Zhanye saw that, he immediately yanked Li Mu back.
“No, Little Mu... it is fine if you ride it, but you have to feed it too!”
“This poor thing is so hungry it is eating shit, and you are still trying to stop it!?”
Li Mu’s eyes immediately went wide, his pupils dilating.
“How is that possible?”
“I fed it! I really fed it!!”
“Isn’t it a Special-Grade Warhorse? Shouldn’t it only need to be fed twice a year?”
“The very day I brought it home, I fed it dried lean meat. It ate more than twenty jin of it!”
Qin Zhanye slapped a hand to his forehead.
“Oh no! This is bad!”
“Old Zhou at the stables mentioned it to me once. Yaogu mutated into a Special-Grade beast only because it stole and ate monster meat.”
“Although its abilities are at the Special Grade level, its dietary habits are very likely still those of a Premium beast. It needs to be fed every single day.”
“It has to keep eating monster meat in order to maintain its Special Grade—maybe even continue mutating!”
“He told me to pass that along to you, but I had too much going on. Once I got busy, I somehow convinced myself I had already told you, and then I completely forgot!”
Qin Zhanye hurriedly explained.
He really had had one of those drifting-thought moments where he convinced himself he had already told Li Mu.
But in fact, he had not...Li Mu and Yaogu, man and horse alike, froze on the spot.
Four eyes stared blankly at Qin Zhanye.
Almost a full month.
It had been almost a full month since Li Mu brought Yaogu back!
And it had only eaten once.
No wonder the thing did nothing all day in the Blessing Field except guzzle Spiritual Spring water like mad.
It drank, pissed, then drank again!
So that was what had been happening—it had been starving, forcing itself full of water every day, and then running around like mad from hunger!!
If that Spiritual Spring had not been full of spiritual energy, Yaogu probably would already have starved to death.
Li Mu finally came back to his senses and turned to look at Yaogu.
“You heard that yourself. This is not my fault.”
Then he pointed at Qin Zhanye and suddenly shouted with manic conviction:
“Trample him to death for me!!”